Weekly Wrap-up ~ All Over the Place and Back Again

Monday would have made an unschooler proud (although I know very little about unschooling .. so I am speculating). Brynne immediately woke up and wanted to play ABCya on the computer. She spent a couple of hours playing math and geography games. Meanwhile, Eli started watching Jurassic Park that he had dvr'd on a previous day.

This led into the two kids playing with dinosaurs and reading a book with pictures and pronuciations of dinosaurs.

I did manage to get them to do a tad bit of schoolwork, but they really just wanted to do our Indonesia study. We watched a video on the use of sun and water for power, and then made our own solar oven. (The Craft Nanny, where we got the instructions for our solar oven, was our Favorite Resource this week.)It was too cloudy to cook anything, but it was ready for the first sunny day.

Making the solar oven moved right on into Brynne wanting to recycle a cereal box and egg carton to make a playhouse for her dolls. Then she wanted to play "Brynne's Clues". She does this a lot.

The clues were "Eli and Brynne", "Time", "Cabinet" (that's where their soup was that they were wanting for lunch that day). And the answer was "It's time for Eli and Brynne to eat lunch." I had to give some additional mini-clues for them to get the answer on this one.

We'll call Tuesday "Life Interrupted". But, we still managed to do our Halloween studies. It was a chaotic day, with some serious issues with Kyndal (looks like she is moving back here with us), so I had to make sure I had everything done so I could go meet her at the doctor's office and pick her up to bring her home.

We started our morning with Halloween puzzles, and then went to the library for some computer time and to get our books. We decided just to read them in the story room at the library instead of checking them out and bringing them home. After we got back home we did some Halloween reading comprehension, made our "BOO" banner, and then had some great fun trying to come up with rhyming answers to riddles in Riddles That Rhyme for Halloween Time. That ended up being a really great lesson in rhyming, and a great way to end the day.

Oh, and we put hot dogs and s'mores in our solar oven because it was sunny in the morning. But, it quickly became cloudy so we finished them up in the microwave after our trip to the library.

Wednesday was devoted to costume fittings and a field trip to the (only) pumpkin patch in our area. Yes, we waited until the last possible day to go. Although the patch was picked over, we were able to actually pick small pumpkins off the vine. It was cool to talk to the kids about where pumpkins really come from when we are used to going to pumpkin patches that have the pumpkins already picked for you and sitting in big piles. And we also got to play in some hay and take some pictures.

Then that evening we had a great night trick-or-treating at our town's Main Street Halloween event. My little Ninjas had a fun night!

Thursday was the only real, full, regular day of school we had this week, but it wasn't without distractions. Kyndal was home from school sick. The kids were so happy to have her home that they had a little trouble focusing. But we did manage to get some schoolwork done. We did all of the basics, worked on our writing assignments, did some reading and reading comprehension, watched another video on Indonesia and discussed environments and ecosystems of animals in anticipation of our field trip to the Tulsa Zoo this next Monday. We successfully cooked our hot dogs in the solar oven!! It was a sunshiney, beautiful day!

Kyndal taught them some probability on the whiteboard, when she was feeling better, and then played Hangman with them for a while.

Because of Kyndal's decision to move back home, and her inability to get her things from her dad's, we had to take a full day on Friday to do some shopping. I felt like I was getting a child ready to go to college. We had to buy everything from a toothbrush ... to underwear ... to clothes ... to shoes ... to a hair straightener ... and everything in between. It was a costly trip. But, I am just glad to have my girl back home. We learned about the Prodigal Son in a living, breathing way. Now that's school.

We have had a great weekend and are leaving for Oklahoma for a few days after church tomorrow. We are doing school, though! We are going to the zoo on Monday as part of our Indonesia study, are having our Election studies on Tuesday, and then coming back home to Missouri on Wednesday. It's going to be another wild week. But, this is homeschooling. This is life. This is good.

We are linking up with the following this week ...